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Um, web site awards, what’s all that about? How many web sites have

I seen with a dozen awards logos, Site of the Day this, Best use of

Blink Tag that. I’ve never heard of most of them. I remember the 1997

D&AD Award for best web site design. After looking long and hard at the

best that the UK could offer, the judges decided that the winner

was ... their own site. So how seriously should we take web awards?

The answer depends on who is dishing them out, which brings me to the

point, at last. Would you regard Yellow Pages as an arbiter on the

fusion of design and technology? I thought not.

The site under the microscope is the winner of the Yell Award for best

commercial web site for 1998. What have we got to take on the Dells and

Amazons in the new arena of e-commerce? Well, it’s mathmos.co.uk.

First up is a graphic-heavy page in three languages that gives no

information about the site or Mathmos. The style is Japanese Retro, the

text is non-existent. On to page two. Still no clue but a promise of

revelation. It has dispensed with CDNOW’s vulgar hard sell from the

first click. Next up is an animation telling me how sad Mathmos used to

be until ... fuck me, it’s a shop selling Lava lamps.

There’s still more graphic-heavy navigation about joining a club. Then

there’s a competition. If you don’t select the right Lava lamp you’re

told off for being sad. This is probably the sort of site that IBM

thinks gives e-commerce a bad name. Is this just a pointless,

self-indulgent site that has no commercial value?

But wait. What am I saying? What happened to the low-cost, democratising

ideal of the web. The Mathmos site is a timely reminder of why we got so

excited about the internet in the first place. It’s a fresh, novel

medium where anyone can connect with someone of similar tastes. It’s

also a reminder that the huge potential of e-commerce is not just for

the big boys. Brilliant, I love it!

New Media is edited by Binnur Beyaztas, who can be contacted at

binnur.beyaztas@haynet.com

Client: Mathmos

Where to find it: www.mathmos.co.uk